I've borne this morning....
"Now, about my brother, Mr. Winter. While listening to Mr. Brown's condolences—you remember Brown, the cashier, Mr. Furneaux—I was thinking of more vital matters. A policy of concealment often defeats its own object, and I have come to the conclusion that you ought to know of a dispute between my father and Robert. There's a woman in the case, of course. It's a rather unpleasant story, too. Poor Bob got entangled with a married woman some months ago. He was infatuated at first, but would have broken it off recently were it not for fear of divorce proceedings."
"Would you make the position a little clearer, sir?" said Winter, who also was listening and thinking. He was quite certain that when he met Mr. Brown he would meet the man who had been worrying a telephone exchange "during the last twenty minutes."
"I—I can't." And Fenley's hand brushed away some imaginary film from before his eyes. "Bob and I never hit it off very well. We're only half brothers, you see."
"Was your father married twice?"
"Am I to reopen a forgotten history?"
"Some person, or persons, may not have forgotten it."
"Well, you must have the full story, if at all. My father was not a well-born man. Thirty years ago he was a trainer in the service of a rich East Indian merchant, Anthony Drummond, of Calcutta, who owned racehorses, and one of Drummond's daughters fell in love with him. They ran away and got married, but the marriage was a failure. She divorced him—by mutual consent, I fancy. Anyhow, I was left on his hands.
"He went to Assam, and fell in with a tea planter named Manning, who had a big estate, but neglected it for racing. My father suddenly developed business instincts and Manning made him a partner. Unfortunately—well, that is a hard word, but it applies—my father married again—a girl of his own class; rather beneath it, in fact. Then Bob was born.
"The old man made money, heaps of it. Manning married, but lost his wife when Sylvia came into the world. That broke him up; he drank himself to death, leaving his partner as trustee and guardian for the infant. There was a boom in tea estates; my father sold on the crest of the wave and came to London. He progressed, but Mrs. Fenley—didn't. She was just a Tommy's daughter, and never seemed to try and rise above the level of 'married quarters'.
"I had to mind my p's and q's as a boy, I can assure you. My mother was always thrown in my teeth. Mrs. Fenley called her 'black.' It was a —— lie. She was dark-skinned, as I am, but there are Cornish and Welsh folk of much darker complexion. My father, too, shared something of the same prejudice. I had to be the good boy of the family. Otherwise, I should have been turned out, neck and crop.
"As I behaved well, he was forced to depend on me, because Bob did as he liked, with his mother always ready to aid and abet him. Then came this scrape I've spoken of. I believe Bob was being blackmailed. That's the long and the short of it. Now you know the plain, ungarbled facts. Better that they should come from me than reach you with the decorations of gossip and servants' tittle-tattle."
The somewhat strained and metallic voice ceased. Fenley was seated at the corner of the table near the door. Seemingly yielding to that ever-present desire for movement, he pushed with his foot an armchair out of its place at the head of the table.
Sylvia Manning had pointed out that chair to Furneaux as the one occupied by Mortimer Fenley at breakfast.
"Is the first Mrs. Fenley dead?" said Furneaux suddenly.
"I don't think so," said Fenley, after a pause.
"You are not sure?"
"No."
"Have you ever tried to find out?"
"No, I dare not."
"May I ask why?"
"If it were discovered that my mother and I were in communication I would have been given short shrift in the bank."
"Did she marry again?"
"I don't know."
Again there was silence. Furneaux seemed to be satisfied that he was following a blind alley, and Winter became the inquisitor.
"What is the name of the woman with whom your brother is mixed up?"
"I can not tell you, but my father knew."
"What leads you to form that opinion?"
"Some words that passed between Bob and him last Saturday morning."
"Where? Here?"
"Yes, in the hall. Tomlinson heard more distinctly than I. I saw there was trouble brewing, and kept out of it—hung back, on the pretense of reading a newspaper."
"As to the missing rifle—can you help us there?"
"Not in the least. I wish to Heaven Bob had gone to Africa, as he was planning. Then all this misery would have been avoided."
"Do you mean your father's death?"
Fenley started. He had not weighed his words.
"Oh, no, no!" he cried hurriedly. "Don't try to trip me into admissions, Mr. Winter. I can't stand that, damned if I can."
He jumped up, went to the sideboard and mixed himself a weak brandy and soda, which he swallowed as if his throat were afire with thirst.
"I am not treating you as a hostile witness, sir," answered Winter calmly. "Mr. Furneaux and I are merely clearing the ground. Soon we shall know, or believe that we know, what line to avoid and what to follow."
"Is Miss Sylvia Manning engaged to be married?" put in Furneaux. Fenley gave him a fiendish look.
"What the devil has Miss Manning's matrimonial prospects got to do with this inquiry?" he said, and the venom in his tone was hardly to be accounted for by Furneaux's harmless-sounding query.
"One never knows," said the little man, taking the unexpected attack with bland indifference. "You don't appreciate our position in this matter. We are not judges, but guessers. We sit in the stalls of a theater, watching people on the stage of real life playing four acts of a tragedy, and it is our business to construct the fifth, which is produced in court. Let me give you a wildly supposititious version of that fifth act now. Suppose some neurotic fool was in love with Miss Manning, or her money, and Mr. Mortimer Fenley opposed the project. That would supply a motive for the murder. Do you take the point?"
"I'm sorry I blazed out at you. Miss Manning is not engaged to be married, nor likely to be for many a day."
Now, the obvious question was, "Why, she being such an attractive young lady?" But Furneaux never put obvious questions. He turned to Winter with the air of one who had nothing more to say. His colleague was evidently perplexed, and showed it, but extricated the others from an awkward situation with the tact for which he was noted.
"I am much obliged to you for your candor in supplying such a clear summary of the family history, Mr. Fenley," he said. "Of course, we shall be meeting you frequently during the next few days, and developments can be discussed as they arise."
His manner, more than his words, conveyed an intimation that when the opportunity served he would trounce Furneaux for an indiscretion. Fenley was mollified.
"Command me in every way," he said.
"There is one more question, the last and the gravest," said Winter seriously. "Do you suspect any one of committing this murder?"
"No! On my soul and honor, no!"
"Thank you, sir. We'll tackle the butler now, if you please."
"I'll send him," said Fenley. Probably in nervous forgetfulness, he lighted a cigarette and went out, blowing two long columns of smoke through his nostrils. He might, or might not, have been pleased had he heard the reprimanding of Furneaux.
"Good stroke, that about the stage, Charles," mumbled Winter. Furneaux threw out his hands with a gesture of disgust.
"What an actor the man is!" he almost hissed, owing to the need there